Keynote Lecture for ND Downtown Conference in Fargo

Jim Kumon to keynote at the seventh annual North Dakota Downtown Conference, Oct. 17-18 in Fargo, North Dakota.

Alliance Executive Director and Co-Founder Jim Kumon will present on how regular people are starting to rebuild their neighborhoods in small increments across the country. The Great Recession showed how fragile our local governments and economies were in their total dependence on large scale development projects. By creating systems that allow and encourage real estate and economic development to happen in smaller increments and continuously over time, our local tax base and economy can stand on sturdier footing. To transition the default setting from large to small, we must make building small legal again, resurrect the role of small scale developer, rebuild our entrepreneurial merchant class, cultivate a new generation of skilled tradespersons and unlock the latent value in our existing land use.